


Where We Leave Ourselves

by EntameWitchLulu



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Night Terrors, Post-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 04:04:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17953259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntameWitchLulu/pseuds/EntameWitchLulu
Summary: Yoko wakes up to the sound of Yuya screaming, but Yuya isn't the one she finds curled up in the corner of his room.





	Where We Leave Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [How to Make a Monster](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15909843) by [EntameWitchLulu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntameWitchLulu/pseuds/EntameWitchLulu). 



Yoko awoke to the sound of Yuya screaming.

Beside her, Yusho choked on a breath as he came awake.  He tried to sit up, but the sheets were tangled underneath him, yanking against her and pinning him back down as he scrambled groggily.  Yoko was already wide awake. Her heart shrieked against her chest as she threw the blankets from herself and hit the floor, running to the hall and bolting to Yuya’s doorway.

She flung the door open, squinting through the dark — her heart screamed as though she were sixteen years old again, waking up to the sound of police sirens outside the hideout as the girls around her woke up yelling.

But only Yuya screamed now, and after a moment to adjust, she found him — not in his bed, curled up in the corner of his room against the desk with his hands clutched against his head, his whole body trembling.

“Yuya,” she said, soft.  “Yuya, it’s all right, it was a bad dream.”

She willed her heart to stop pounding, willed her voice not to shake.  Willed herself not to start crying at the sight of her son, her little boy, curled up and shaking as though he were only nine years old again.

She stepped into the room.

“Yuya,” she called again.  “Yuya, it’s all right. I’m here.”

The moment she took her next step towards him, his head shot up at the movement.  Panic overtook him. He scrabbled wildly with both hands against the floor, alighting on a pencil that must have fallen when he hit the desk.

“Stay away from me!” he shrieked, flinging the pencil at her.  It bounced harmlessly off her stomach, but it was more than enough for her to make the connection, to realize that Yuya’s movements were off, more than enough time for her eyes to adjust enough to realize that Yuya’s eyes were the wrong shade.

“Oh,” she breathed, her heart breaking.  “Oh. Yuuri.”

The boy who looked out from her son’s face but wasn’t Yuya stared at her, eyes wide and wild.  She held up both hands, slowly lowering herself to a crouch a few feet away from him so that she wasn’t looming over him.

“It’s all right,” she soothed.  “Yuuri. It’s all right.”

She’d met the others, of course.  It had only been a few weeks since everything had...since everything had ended.  But she’d met them, the boys whose eyes would peek out from Yuya’s every now and then, the way that they moved differently than her son did or spoke with different cadences.  Yuto had appeared one night in the kitchen, shyly asking if she needed any help washing the dishes. Yugo had popped out during a televised duel to jump up and yell at the screen before blushing furiously when he realized that Yoko had seen him.  Slowly, Yuya had learned to switch places with them, to introduce them.

She hadn’t yet, officially, met Yuuri, though.

“Stay away from me,” Yuuri hissed, making Yuya’s voice sound harsher.  “Don’t — don’t touch me — don’t _look_ at me — not like _this_ —”

Tears rolled down his cheeks.  She could not remember ever seeing Yuya look so frightened, and she wondered with a pain in her heart what might have caused it.  Slowly, so as not to startle him, she sat down crosslegged, coming no closer.

“I’m not looking,” she said, looking down at her legs.  “Breathe with me, all right? In, and out.”

“Shut up,” Yuuri mumbled.  “Shut up, shut up, shut up — stay away from me — don’t _touch_ me —”

“I’m not touching you.  I’m staying over here. Do you know where you are, Yuuri?”

She chanced a peek through her bangs.  His breaths were starting to slow down, but he still stared at her like a deer caught in the headlights.  His hands still roved the floor around him as though searching for another weapon.

“You’re in Yuya’s house, remember?” Yoko continued.  “Wherever you thought you were, it was only a dream. You’re all right.”

Yuuri’s magenta eyes looked so strange in Yuya’s face.  What had happened to this kid, anyway? She knew so little about him.  Yusho had told her all that had happened, how he’d tried to duel Yuuri and lost.  Yuuri’s frantic desire to become one with the others. His cruelty from Academia’s teachings.  Yuya had always avoided the subject when she’d asked when she would get to meet Yuuri.

The trembling boy in front of her didn’t match the image she had in her head.

More tears rolled down Yuuri’s face, and his lips pulled back in an un-Yuya-like snarl.

“Stop it,” he gasped.

Yoko stopped talking.

“No,” Yuuri hissed.  “Stop — _looking_ at me like that.”

Yoko quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Kid, if you don’t want me to be concerned, don’t be concerning,” she said.

Yuuri actually hissed at her, pressing himself back against the wall.  She leaned back on her hands. It took everything she had not to fling herself across the distance and hug him — that was her son’s face and body, after all, and she’d lost track of the number of times she’d held him as he cried.  But this wasn’t Yuya.

The silence stretched out between them.  Yoko heard only the soft shifting of Yusho in the hall.  He must have heard her, heard that she was speaking to Yuuri, and decided to hold back.  Being smart for once.

Yuuri’s breaths began to slow down.  He didn’t relax, but he stopped looking for a weapon.

“Do you know where you are, Yuuri?” Yoko asked again, softly.

“I’m not _stupid_ .  I’m in Yuya’s house.  In his _body_.”

His lips curled back into another snarl, but the lingering panic still remained on his face.  He flinched a bit at something he seemed to think he saw.

“Do you want the light on?” Yoko asked.

Yuuri looked like he was about to snarl at her.  But something in him faltered.

“Yes.”

The word slipped out of him as though by accident.  He clenched his jaw. Yoko only nodded. She stood, slowly, not making any sudden movements, and took a step back towards the wall so she could reach behind her for the light switch.  It came on with a pop, and now in the light, the difference in Yuya’s eye color was prominent. Yuuri’s breaths still came hard, and his eyes fixed on her.

“You can go, now,” he said.

Yoko didn’t move.  She just sat back down again.  Yuuri’s lips curled.

“I said —”

“You know, when I was a kid, I used to be in a gang,” Yoko said, ignoring him.  “It was rough stuff. You were tough or you were dead. None of this carding business.  I saw a kid get beaten almost to death with a metal pipe by a sore loser.”

She wished, suddenly, that she had a cigarette.  But she’d quit years ago, and though she automatically reached for her pocket, there was nothing there.

“Once, before I became the leader of the Maiami Queens, I got locked inside a meat packaging warehouse by a rival gang.  My team didn’t come back for me — still not sure if they decided I wasn’t worth the risk, or if they didn’t even know I was there.”

Yuuri’s eyes narrowed, and she thought she might have seen him lean forward just a bit.

“I dueled those kids for hours in the dark.  Kept getting pushed up against hanging pig carcasses — fucking disgusting.  Worse in the dark when you don’t know what it is.”

Her hair stood on end, and she had to swallow back some of the panic.

“I didn’t win, in the end.  There were too many of them.  They beat me up once I was out of cards, left me there all night.”

She met Yuuri’s gaze.

“I still dream about it,” she said.  “That, and other bullshit too. It never goes away.  Not completely.”

For a moment, Yuuri held her gaze.  Then he actually snorted. He slumped back against the wall, his breaths finally coming regularly.

“Are you so idiotic as to think I needed to hear a sob story like that?” he said.

Yoko smirked at him, and he blinked with surprise.

“Kid,” she said.  “You’re tough. I can respect that.”

She leaned back on her hands, studying him.

“But until you acknowledge that you’ve still left a part of yourself back in whatever dark warehouse you got left in, you’re going to keep having those nightmares.”

Just the faintest of trembles came to Yuuri’s hands, and he pressed them against the floor.

“I don’t need your help,” he mumbled.

Yoko shrugged.  With a sigh and crack of her shoulders, she stood up.

“That’s what I used to say too,” she said.  “But take your time, kid. If and when you want to talk about it...you know where to find me.”

She turned back towards the door.

“Why?”

She glanced over her shoulder.  For the first time, even despite his previous panic attack...for the first time, Yuuri looked...vulnerable.  For first time, he looked like a child.

“Why what?”

“Why are you trying to...help me?” he said through grit teeth.  “I killed your husband. I made your son like this. Is it because I’m _here_ ?  Is it because your _son_ is in here?  Because you see _him_?”

Yoko blinked at him.  Then she turned back towards him.  Moving slowly but steadily, she came in front of him, crouching before him.  Nerves flickered over his eyes, his teeth clenching. He flinched when she raised her hand, and then blinked, lips parting with surprise, as she just laid it gently on his head.

“You’re my son too, now, kid.”

She smirked again.

“And us fucked up souls?  Sometimes we need to stick together.”

Yuuri’s eyes widened.  For a moment, he only stared at her.

Then his eyes melted back to red, and Yuya blinked, shuddering softly.

“He ran away?” Yoko said with a half smile.

“He really doesn’t like it when people can see him....in pain,” Yuya mumbled.  “He’s afraid people will use it against him.”

Yoko moved her hands to cup Yuya’s face, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Are you hanging in there too?”

Yuya nodded, holding her hands against his face.

“I can see what happened to him,” he mumbled.  “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s all right.  It’ll be his story to tell.  When he’s ready.”

She didn’t let go, and neither did he.

“Do you want me to stay here tonight?”

Yuya closed his eyes.

“I think we’d all like that.”


End file.
